MEDIATHEK

Eerie Days is a Music Theater performance in form of an interactive installation about medically induced coma dreams by Claudia Hansen.

Silence, sound, light, motion photography, darkness, video animations, overwhelmingness and emptiness reconstruct the state of medically induced coma – the dreams and feelings.
It is a construction based on stories told by people that have experienced it.

The audience is at the center of the performance space and put into ‘spotlight’. In other words, they become the protagonist of medically induced coma. The performance space is an 8m2 room, especially constructed for this performance. In order to experience the isolation felt in coma, it is performance where maximum four people can enter at the same time. The audience lies down on the floor and is transported into a full body experience of medically induced coma dreams. The visuals, the sounds and the tactile impressions fill the box with impressions of dreams and feelings – the loneliness of medically induced coma.

The music has been composed, played and recorded especially for this performance. The main instruments are the vibraphone and other percussion instruments. It is a 20– minute soundscape that transports the audience into a different state of mind by depicting feelings experienced in coma dreams.

On the one hand, the music is very comforting since it sounds like a never–ending lullaby, but on the other hand, through the extreme bass tones in the music, the floor starts to vibrate and makes the performance also a tactile and oppressive experience.

The visuals consist of motion photography, silent movies and video animations. The visuals fill the space with oversized and heavily colorful projections. They depict the visual aspect of the different stages a person comes across on the journey of coma dreams.

The texts are spoken by a voice. The first text reconstructs the fragmented thoughts one has while being in medically induced coma. This text has been written especially for this performance. The second text concentrates on thoughts on death. This text is an excerpt from Max Frisch’s book ‘Fragebogen’.